[Saya]

Originally Posted by PortraitOfSanity

I'm not accusing you of anything.... I'm talking about this:





But back to the point at hand. How exactly would we go back to "the way that they were before artifical selection..... (etc)"? There's no plausible way to have animals happy and free and such in today's world. For better or for worse, there's not even enough habitat to support the current wild animal populations, how do you think increasing that population would actually result? That's the thing with the whole "total liberation" argument. It sounds nice and warm and fuzzy when you hear it, but if you actually weigh the consequences, it's not even plausible as a humane solution. Unless PETA's advocating killing almost all of the domesticated animals in the world, which simply makes them even more hypocritical.

I was sure I replied to this but it seems when the boards were down it got lost, makes me a sad Saya

Anyway, not speaking for PeTA obviously but abolitionists in general are of the mind that if the world were to realize that animals are not property and go vegan, it won't happen overnight, it would be a gradual change, therefore as the demand of animal products drops, so we would stop breeding them at ridiculous rates, therefore the livestock population would drop. Remember, we don't let cows and pigs have sex, we artificially inseminate them, so we have complete control over their numbers. If demand goes down, they won't breed as many, so you can see how this will work gradually. Now, if your super hypothetical and super unrealistic situation comes to pass that all of a sudden we all went vegan, and you say we'd kill the ecosystems with all those extra cows, well, consider this. The meat, dairy and egg industry is disastrous to the environment already.

"A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526134.500

"Meat production is a major cause of water pollution. For example, livestock produce large amounts of manure which contaminate rivers and groundwater. (Simon Donner, a scientist at the University of British Columbia has calculated that the world’s livestock produce 308 million kilograms of manure – the weight of the Empire State Building – every two hours.)

Livestock manure contains nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients that run off into streams, damaging wetlands and fragile coastal ecosystems. High levels of nitrates in drinking water are associated with blue baby syndrome, a condition which reduces babies’ ability to carry sufficient oxygen in the blood."

http://www.vancouverhumanesociety.bc...at/environment

"Forest is not only cleared for cattle grazing but also to make way for soy planatations. Around 90% of the world’s soy is fed to animals and it is now widely recognised that feeding the 73 million cows of the Amazon, and all the others animals raised for meat in the world, is the biggest driver of deforestation. On top of this, 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by burning to clear new or overgrown pasture for cattle. The contribution to climate change this creates is further exasperated by the the methane that the cows produce."

http://ethicaleating.org.uk/2008/06/...deforestation/

Really anyone who supports the meat industry has no right to accuse vegans for having evil plans for the environment. We might not have a detailed plan laid out just incase everyone decides all at the same time to go vegan, but where's your plan to sustain your diet and all the animals you need?

There are plenty of animal rights groups with practical goals like you stated. The usual ones are imposing more control in slaughterhouses and animal farms, increasing punishments for animal cruelty violations and laws restricting medical experimentation on animals. Those are all good things that can be accomplished, and have an obvious benefit to animals and to society. But PETA just has these Utopian wishes about animals being able to prance around and be free and happy. I've talked to a good number of hardcore PETA members, and I can't get any sort of practical plan out of them. They just want it to be their way, but don't stop to think how we can get there, or even if their way would actually work.}

Whats the good if the cow has a name and has good living conditions if it is still enslaved and exploited, from birth when it is seperated from his mother, to death as a veal cow? What good is it for a dairy cow to be named Bessie and patted on the head everyday when all her babies are taken away, her boys to become veal and her daughters to replace her when she is too old to give milk, and the farmer decides to kill her to make hamburgers? What good is it to an egg laying hen when in a year when she can't produce as many eggs, she gets electrocuted? What good is it for a beef cow to get fattened up and slaughtered when she is only two years old? Exploitation is exploitation, slavery is slavery and slaughter is slaughter. For any animal rights group to promote welfarism is hypocrisy, as it does not recognize an animal's inherent worth but just says "They are still property, just treat them better." You might enslave someone and treat them nicely, but its still wrong to enslave other people, and as animals are alike to us in some very important ways, in those ways they should be recognized and attributed self worth. Bob Torres (one of the authors of Vegan Freak) wrote a lovely piece about this before:

"To begin with, despite the question as posed, I don’t think animals should have the same rights as humans in all cases. Granting the dogs I live with a right to free speech or the right to vote is pointless (insert your own joke here about the election and re-election of George W. Bush). Instead, I’m advocating for something that is much more simple. In the respects that animals are like us—most notably, in their ability to feel pain, have subjective experiences, and value their own continued existence—animals should have rights similar to the rights we have. In the broadest terms, this would mean that we’d have to stop eating and wearing them, experimenting on them, and bringing them into existence for our own ends.

Anyone who lives with a cat or a dog knows that animals not only have personalities, but that they also have memories, fears, wants, and desires. The dogs and cat that I live with seek out comfort, avoid pain, and desire companionship, and it is clear to me that they suffer as acutely as I do (if not more acutely) when they are hurt, or sick, or scared. Moreover, having spent time around animals ultimately destined for slaughter, I also know that pigs and cows and chickens are also capable of these same pleasures and pains, and what appears to be a subjective awareness of their surroundings, yet for reasons that no one can really justify, we snuggle up with one set of animals called “pets,” while we eat another set of animals called “livestock.”

When it comes down to it, the case for animal rights is really a case for adopting a thorough moral and ethical stance in favor of treating like cases alike. My own outlook has been shaped by the ethical theory of Gary L. Francione, who argues that though animals and humans are clearly different, they are alike in the sense that they both suffer, and are both sentient. For this reason, Francione argues, animals should receive equal moral consideration. Most importantly, this would mean extending to animals inherent value, or really bringing them into the moral community by recognizing that certain aspects of their personhood cannot be “sold away” or sacrificed for the benefit of another. Put most simply, because animals are like us in some relevant regards, they should be treated like we would be treated in those instances.

The tired objections that animals do not deserve rights because they lack rationality, or language, or human levels of intelligence, or whatever arbitrary characteristics anthropocentric philosophers decide are important are so self-serving as to be almost comical. The obvious problem with using qualities like these to exclude animals from moral consideration is that we can almost always find humans who also lack those qualities. A great many humans lack what we’d consider to be “normal” rational faculties, yet no one seriously suggests that the mentally disabled be enslaved, or that they should be used for food or medical experiments. Similarly, you may be smarter or more eloquent or stronger than I am, yet none of those attributes gives you the right to make me your property. Why? Because in the relevant regard that both you and I share in not being the chattel of another, no arbitrary criteria—not intelligence, rationality, language, eye color, skin color, gender, etc.—can be used to violate this basic right that guarantees our inherent value. Those of us who are for animal rights (and not simply for animal welfare) wish to make “species” another irrelevant criterion for deciding who does and does not get the basic rights accorded to members of our moral community... "

http://blog.veganfreak.com/

It is of little benefit to animals to still be enslaved and exploited when they "are treated nicer", Bessie has no say if she doesn't want her udders attached to the milking machine, Billy still gets his throat slit,, #37 still gets seperated from his mother with his umbilical still attached so he can make a nice piece of veal, the lab rat still doesn't get a say in whether or not he gets cancer. You can make it as "humane" as you want but it doesn't make it "nice" or change the fact that an animal has to be born into exploitation and is doomed to die just because you want a hamburger.